Benjamin Button maquette (Ben 80)

Benjamin Button maquette (Ben 80) is a lifecast of Brad Pitt. It is an anatomically correct bust commissioned by Digital Domain studios, and created by Rick Baker and Kazuhiro Tsuji, for the Warner Bros. picture, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Background
Benjamin Button maquette (Ben 80) is one of three maquettes commissioned by Digital Domain. The other two being (Ben 70) and (Ben 60).

Ed Ulbrich, Chief Executive Officer for Digital Domain, detailed the visual effects used for aging Brad Pitt in a TEDEducation video on YouTube. Each maquette is a template for Brad and is scanned into the computer at extremely high resolution (high polygonal count). This allowed the visual effects team access to three age increments (60, 70, and 80) of Brad in the computer.

The animators recorded Brad executing a complete set of Ekman FASC poses while wearing a new form of digital, green-screen paint ---effectively creating a library of expressions for the digitized version of the maquettes. This innovative process contributed to the film winning Best Visual Effects at the 81st Academy Awards.